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Sunday, August 17, 2008

Lehman: More Problems

by Calculated Risk on 8/17/2008 10:51:00 PM

A couple of articles on Lehman ...

From the WSJ: Lehman Faces Another Loss, Adding Salt To Its Wounds

With the end of the New York company's fiscal third quarter less than two weeks away, some analysts are girding for a loss of $1.8 billion or more ... [with] widely anticipated write-downs in a portfolio saddled with more than $50 billion in risky real-estate and mortgage assets ...
And on some of those real estate assets, from the Financial Times: Lehman faces fight to shed real estate assets
Lehman's near-term fate depends in large part on whether it can attract buyers for the assets and securities in its commercial real estate portfolio, valued at $40bn at the end of May.
...
Lehman's portfolio is very diverse. It consists of so-called whole loans, commercial mortgage-backed securities, risky financings such as equity bridges and individual projects.
In the Archstone deal, mentioned in the article, Lehman was in the riskiest position and it's very likely that their investment is now worthless.

For those interested in more details of the Archstone deal, from the NY Times (Oct 6, 2007): Deal Is Complete to Take Archstone REIT Private

And from the WSJ: Lehman's Property Bets Are Coming Back to Bite.